Well, this blog is coming to you from a post-abroad-depressed, emotional, jet lagged 21 year old who can't be bothered to get out of bed. It's rainy and gross outside, the house is quiet, the neighbourhood is quiet. It's a monday morning in snoozeville, Ontario and I'm lying in bed listening to Spanish/Latino music, still imagining that I'm somewhere else. It's been about 40 hours since I landed on Toronto soil and all the weirdness of readjustment and reverse culture shock began, which I will be talking/complaining about shortly but first I'm going to rewind a little to the my last few days in Europe.
Wednesday night my mom and I arrived back into Granada after 16 hours of traveling (the full story about that trip will be written/ranted about in another blog), I've never been so relieved and sad to look upon my city, knowing it would be the last time this year I would pull into that bus station. We got off the bus and caught a taxi, since I had to be completely moved out of my own apartment before I left for Italy, we headed over to Mads' place where were staying and she was heading over to her bf's. We met up at the apartment around 11:45pm to get the keys and whatnot and then headed upstairs. Originally we were going to out for a tapa or something but my mom was exhausted so I just went on facebook and checked my email till about 3am to reconnect to the world since I hadn't had much internet during my travels.
Thursday was a blur of a day, we overslept instead of running errands and had to immediately head over to my cousin Kat's place to do some repacking, we left all my suitcases there during our travels since she had lots of space, and they took up a lot of space aha. After an hour or two of repacking we headed out to do last minute errands, buying a Uni of Granada sweater, buying tea, revisiting some of the Moroccan places where I made friends with the owners, buying postcards/shot glasses, and those kind of things. It was a beautiful day in Granada so we had lunch at one of the outdoor cafes and ended up talking to a couple of Aussie girls at the table next to us who were just traveling through. Did some more running around, got some gelato, and revisited some of my favourite places in the city one last time then eventually headed over to Casa Lo restaurant for a goodbye dinner with some friends. My mom and I got there a little earlier to eat a proper dinner since we mostly just had tapas and drinks once my friends started showing up, we all had a good laugh and eventually headed out, my mom went back to the apartment and the rest of us headed out for drinks, on the way I ran into 2 small groups of friends which was great, our group of people grew as we went along aha.
We ended up at this mojito bar called Mo Hi Too aha and we got this deal for 1 euro off everyones drinks since we were in a big group which was awesome, a few more friends showed up there which was great, but then reality started setting in. People slowly started leaving because some had exams or whatnot the next day and the goodbyes began, it was pretty awful. Drunken goodbyes, uuf. It was my last full day in Granada and I was still in denial that the end was coming. Eventually we moved on to an Irish bar, although we stopped into a Paella bar before that to find our fav crazy italian friend who is always in there, I'm going to miss her so much. By then the group had dwindled down to just a few of my really close friends, we spent the remainder of the night there since we had all become too tired and drunk to go hit up a club or whatnot. Eventually we all parted ways but agreed to meet up for lunch and cheesecake the next day.
I got back to the apartment pretty drunk, my mom was still kind of wake when I got in so I had to pretend like I wasn't too drunk, she knew I had been drinking but not necessarily how much, I drank a ton of water to try and sober up a bit but when I lied down in bed my head was spinningggg. The next morning I wasn't feeling too great but had to get up early to get some last minute things done before meeting up with ppl for lunch, gotta love hangovers when you need to be productive lol always a terrible idea but we always seem to do it anyways. 1pm rolled around and we all started showing up at my fav place for some drinks and cheesecake, it was really quiet which was nice, it was just my 3 close friends, my mom, the owner, our fav waiter, and I in the place, plus a couple on the other side of the room. Saying goodbye to those 3 was one of the hardest things I've gone through, 2 were from England and the other from Finland, we all became really close over the last 8 months and saying goodbye was just...ugh, so terrible, I have no idea when I'm going to see them again, that's really the hardest part. At least with all the North American friends I made, the chance of seeing them again is pretty high, but with all the europeans, it's a lot more iffy, I know I'll be back in Europe eventually, but who knows, that may be still another 3 or 4 years down the road from now. Anyways, saying goodbye to my Finnish friend was definitely the hardest, she's become one of my closest friends and I already miss her like mad. All the eyes started welling as we all said goodbye, again and again, before my mom eventually dragged me out of there.
I hate goodbyes, I know they're a part of life and they're not necessarily goodbyes but just see-you-laters, but it's still really hard. You would think it would get easier or that I would start to get used to it at least because I move around so much but no. Instead I just miss more people and have more goodbye heartaches. Just have to keep telling myself that I will be back in Europe and that I will see all those amazing people again, this hope is really the only thing that gets me through.
The only reason I had to leave the lunch with those girls so urgently was because my mom and I had booked a session at the Baños Arabes (Arab baths), if you are ever in Spain or somewhere where something like this is available, I highly recommend it. I've been going to them once a month since Feb. It's pretty much like being in heaven for two hours and being a student is even better because you get a good discount. For those of you who have no idea what they are, it's basically a recreated version of the large communal baths they used to have in Arabic/Muslim cultures/countries, the one in Granada is a large underground area, dark, full of candle light and fake star carved ceiling lights. There's the sound of running water and sometimes quiet Arabic music playing in the background, such a calm and quiet atmosphere. Basically there's 3 pools of water, a cold one -which is freezing, the medium one which is a nice, warm pool temperature and then the hot one which is just hot enough to feel amazing but not too hot so you can still lie in it for more then 5 minutes at a time. There's also this large flat heated 'stone' which I usually end up falling asleep on for a bit, and then there's an area with massage table alcoves and a tea drinking room, the Moroccan tea they have there is Delicious.
My last few hours in Granada were slowly slipping away as I laid in those beautifully relaxing pools of warm water, the massage was amazing too, we left there feeling like rejuvenated. But then it was time to face the music... we grabbed some shwarma for dinner, the best delicious, greasy food of Granada, and then headed over to Kats to get my bags and head for the bus station.
We were taking a late night bus up to Madrid because our flight was at 9am the next day, it was a long 5 hour ride, I watched out the window as Granada faded into the distance and the hilly landscape rose around me, then turned my attention to the spanish-dubbed American movies they were playing on the bus, kind of paying attention but kind of lost in miserable thoughts too. I eventually fell asleep and awoke at 2am when we arrived at the airport, they dropped us off and we headed over to the terminal, all I have to say is thank god for Iberia. We were technically flying British Airways but our flight from Madrid to London was operated my Iberia and their desks are open 24h so we were able to check in and get rid of all the suitcases instead of dragging them around the airport. We spent the remainder of the night sleeping/chilling in the McD's in the airport, thank god for McD's too lol comfortable seats/benches to sleep on and free wifi. 9am rolled around and we groggily boarded our first flight, the rest is kind of a blur, one flight, another airport, another flight... finally at 3pm (9pm Spanish time) we landed at Pearson. I've never been so relieved and depressed to be back in Pearson. It was a pretty surreal moment pulling into the gate and walking back through that old familiar place.
Getting into that cab and driving "home" was so surreal it almost felt like a dream. I watched all the familiar buildings pop up on the horizon, pass by all the familiar high way exits, eventually exiting back into ptown, down past my old high school, and back to my little suburban house. I can't even describe how weird it was being back. There really is no other word to describe it than just..weird. It was a weird mixture of being somewhere so familiar but feeling so out of place. Guess that's when you know that you've changed, because it definitely wasn't this little suburban purgatory that changed.
Well to be fair, there has been quite a fair bit of change around here, tons of construction, new buildings, things moving around, people moving around. Life still goes on when you leave, although that seems like a weird concept for some reason. The first week I was mostly just depressed and trying to readjust to life here, I spent most of my time in bed, watching tv with my parents, or catching up with high school friends rather than productive things like unpacking, job searching, etc. even though I had a to-do list about a mile long.
Reverse culture shock and readjustment were the weirdest experience. It was all the small things that tripped me up, like having to use house alarm systems again, hearing people around me all speak in English, putting dishes in a dish washer, speaking English to people in restaurants and stores, even the fact that the button to flush to the toilet was not on top of the tank but a lever on the side. I know that sounds bizarre but it's true, you just become so accustomed to the way of live after living somewhere for so long that even somewhere you know so well like Toronto begins to feel kind of foreign, or you feel foreign being there. There were many times where I said or almost said something in Spanish before realizing that no one else would understand me. I spent the majority of the first week being miserable and listening to spanish music and talking with friends who were still there. It felt lonely, even when I hung out with most of my friends here it just fet weird and out of place. Not with all my friends, because there's some people you can always connect with no matter the circumstance. But a lot of the time I'd be with a group of people and they'd be talking about things that were totally lost on me. Like my friend Karl talking about the purge, I was like WTF is that? or people talking about the Jays games or hockey...yeah, I haven't seen or cared about any of those things in a year if ever.. so not gunna start now. Ir definitely felt surreal for a long time and I kept hoping it was maybe a dream and that I was still in Spain, just having a bad dream that I was back home.
Obviously it was not a bad dream and I am here now. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about coming home too, like sushi, Tim Hortons, nice showers, CLOTHES DRYERS, dim sum, and my bed, I missed my bed. But even this place isn't home for me anymore, my life is in Vancouver now. This is kind of like purgatory between my fantasy life in Spain and my real life in Vancouver. I started this blog a couple days after I got home but it's taken me this long to get back to writing it. Just haven't felt like writing for awhile I guess. I've been home for a month now, I'm still jobless, slowly starting getting used to being home but still feeling kind of weird at times. It still a lot of feelings of being out of place and misunderstood, I guess everyone goes through that though, I wish there was more people around here who understood, but oh well. Until then I'll just be here...
No comments:
Post a Comment